‘Agatha All Along’ Production Designer John Collins Marches Down, Down, Down His Brilliantly Designed Road [Podcast]

Contending at the Water Cooler

Marching ever forward ‘neath the wooded shrine
I stray not from the path. I hold death’s hand in mine.

Disney+’s Marvel Television series Agatha All Along wrapped this week with a 2-episode series finale that brought the series to an emotionally satisfying climax. While initially uneven tonally, Agatha eventually settled into an entertaining and compelling narrative. The series evolved into something memorable thanks to fantastic performances from its cast, including Kathryn Hahn, Joe Locke, Aubrey Plaza, Sasheer Zamata, Ali Ahn, and fan-favorite Patti LuPone.

As the series progressed, however, it quickly became clear, at least to these eyes, that the true star of Agatha All Along was its incredibly inventive production designer, John Collins, and his hard working collaborators. Using WandaVision as a logical launching point, Collins took Agatha beyond the suburban Westview into a magical world of witchcraft, trials, and cinema-inspired sets that somehow manage to seamlessly blend artifice and authenticity.

In his world, nothing is accidental, every creative decision leading the characters and the audience into thematic relevance.

“There’s some common threads that run throughout the road, which is that road itself connects all of these trials. We have a color scheme going on with the leaves that give a hint to what the trial is going to be, whether it’s the blue leaves leading into the water trial or the reddish orange leaves leading into the fire trial,” Collins explained. “To me, it started with developing the look of the road itself and that forest environment. We have a very unique situation where we’re not only seeing it through the lens of Agatha Harkness and her backstory, which we learn more of in later episodes, but it’s also that it has so much to do with Teen’s perception of what the witch community is and his reimagining of what the road is and pulling elements from his past and popular culture that interweave throughout their journey.”

(L-R) Rio Vidal (Aubrey Plaza), Alice Wu-Gulliver (Ali Ahn), Jennifer Kale (Sasheer Zamata), Teen (Joe Locke), Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn) and Lilia Calderu (Patti LuPone) in Marvel Television’s AGATHA ALL ALONG, exclusively on Disney+. Photo courtesy of Marvel Television. © 2024 MARVEL.

Agatha’s hexagonal basement, carried over from WandaVision, begins the journey down the Witches’ Road, a wild and dark homage to The Wizard of Oz that features several pieces of hand-crafted trees fashioned by Collins’ talented creative team. Along the way, she and her coven encounter trials curated for each witch. One trial recalls a character’s musical legacy. Another trial orients its characters in a Cabin In the Woods-inspired location. Another trial memorably inserts Agatha and Teen in a medieval castle.

But everything begins with a seemingly innocent, Pottery Barn near-certified beach house. The set may not have been Collins’ personal favorite, but his wife would have something to say about that.

“The beach house is fun and beautiful, and my wife wants to live there and not in our house. For me, the castle, the cabin, and the recording studio are my three favorite sets apart from the road. Episode seven is one of my favorites, which features the castle very heavily,” Collins shared. “But I also like it because, with Lilia’s flashbacks, we’re jumping into multiple sets throughout. In that one episode, we’re seeing 70% of the work that we’ve done visually. For me, that episode seven is really magical because of how we’re jumping between those sets.”

As the series wraps, a pivotal moment of action takes place in a steely and barren version of Agatha’s basement. As with all of his set pieces, the set unexpectedly ties into a characters’ thematic journey throughout the series.

“A lot of it has to do with feeling to beat that trial, there has to be something in there to provide growth for life for that seed to take place. We imagined this super sterile environment that’s oppressive, and how can anything possibly grow in this sterile box that we have,” Collins recalled. “So the sterility and that brushed aluminum look that we’re going with down there, it gives us that, but at the same time, it really is Agatha ending up in her basement again.”

Follow me, my friend
To glory at the end

For more with Agatha All Along production design John Collins, click here or below for our podcast interview.

(L-R) Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn) and Billy Maximoff (Joe Locke) in Marvel Television’s AGATHA ALL ALONG, exclusively on Disney+. Photo courtesy of Marvel Television. © 2024 MARVEL.

Podcast Music:
Royalty Free Music from Tunetank.com
Track: Here We Go! by cinematic alex
https://tunetank.com/track/802-here-we-go/

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